We must purify our conscience lest it hinder our progress toward maturity!
We cannot totally rely on our conscience which is within our soul. The conscience is defined as: co-perception, i.e., moral consciousness. People often refer to their conscience as their moral compass. It is the soul as distinguishing between what is morally good and bad, prompting to do the former and shun the latter, commending the one, condemning the other.
Who decides what is morally good or morally bad? In the unbeliever, it is according to their upbringing and exposure to society. In a believer, it should be based on The Word of GOD and confirmed by The Holy Spirit. When I get a check in my spirit, I know there is an issue to be dealt with.
Paul addresses the conscience as he wrote by The Holy Spirit in 1st Corinthians chapter 8:
1 Now let me address the issue of food offered in sacrifice to idols. It seems that everyone believes his own opinion is right on this matter. How easily we get puffed up over our opinions! But Love builds up the structure of our new life.
2 If anyone thinks of himself as a know-it-all, he still has a lot to learn.
3 But if a person passionately Loves God, he will possess the knowledge of God.
Your opinions are closely tied to your conscience. I have grown to dispossess opinions which have no Scriptural basis. Our “opinions” should be based on The Word, not someone else’s logical and convincing conclusion about a matter.
4 Therefore concerning the eating of things offered to idols, we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is no other God but one.
5 For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as there are many gods and many lords),
6 yet for us there is one God, the Father, of Whom are all things, and we for Him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and through whom we live.
Those who were idolaters and considered idols as real and living, were being misguided by their conscience at the time. Yes, your conscience can misguide you when it lacks purity from The Word.
7 However, there is not in everyone that knowledge; for some, with consciousness of the idol, until now eat it as a thing offered to an idol; and their conscience, being weak, is defiled.
8 But food does not commend us to God; for neither if we eat are we the better, nor if we do not eat are we the worse.
9 But beware lest somehow this liberty of yours become a stumbling block to those who are weak.
10 For if anyone sees you who have knowledge eating in an idol’s temple, will not the conscience of him who is weak be emboldened to eat those things offered to idols?
11 And because of your knowledge shall the weak brother perish, for whom Christ died?
12 But when you thus sin against the brethren, and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ.
13 Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I will never again eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble.
In other Words, if a believer with a weak conscience sees you, who have a greater understanding, dining in an idol’s temple, won’t this be a temptation to him to violate his own conscience and eat food offered to idols? So, in effect, by exercising your understanding of freedom, you have ruined this weak believer, a brother for whom Christ has died! And when you offend weaker believers by wounding their consciences in this way, you also offend the Anointed One!
Can our conscience be corrected and freed from past defilements? Absolutely! Paul is a perfect example. He had officiated over the persecution of believers yet in Acts chapter 23, he states:
1 Paul fixed his eyes on the members of the council and said, “My brothers, up to this day I have lived my life before God with a perfectly clear conscience.”
How could he make such a statement?
Paul wrote by The Holy Spirit in 2nd Corinthians chapter 5:
17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.
18 Now all things are of God, Who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation,
19 that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the Word of reconciliation.
Paul’s statement to the council was true because he fully accepted the reality that he was a new creation and his conscience had been purified and corrected by The Living Word. Now, The Holy Spirit bears witness to the conscience whereas before, the conscience was unreliable.